[grc] Happy anniversary to WINGS!

[Frieda Werden]

Beloved community radio people,

29 years ago, the very first episode of WINGS was released on the Public
Radio Satellite in the US. The pilot was produced at Western Public Radio
in San Francisco by Augusta del Zotto, Katherine Davenport, and me, and it
included 13 news stories (!).  The pilot was funded by a director's
discretionary grant from Sandra Rattley at the NPR Satellite Program
Development Fund, Thanks, Sandra!

Sadly, the SPDF was very soon de-funded by CPB.  When WINGS applied to CPB
in 1987, we were told "this is an idea whose time has passed."  Apparently
not!

Thanks to a small travel grant from NFCB, Katherine and I attended the
AMARC meeting in Vancouver in 1986.  That connected us to the international
community radio movement, so that we gained more international contributors
and also international subscribers. We also started to realize that
community radio was the place where we'd find the minds and ears and
station programmers that liked us, rather than Public Radio. WINGS won a
Golden Reel from NFCB for coverage of women's conferences in our first year.

In the fall of 1987, we signed a contract to distribute weekly (on open
reel) via Longhorn Radio Network at the University of Texas.  But most of
our station subscribers were not on Longhorn  or on the PRSS, so we bought
a bunch of cassette decks and dubbed to them from our Otari MX 5050B open
reel editing deck, mailing out the shows two per cassette in padded
envelopes with paper show descriptions enclosed.

In 1994 the Otari gave place to a digital audio workstation. Also in the
'90s we signed a contract with Pacifica to be on their ku-band satellite.
In those days, we had to dub our shows to DAT tapes and mail them to
Berkeley for uplink, because cassette sound was not considered good enough.

Over the years, cassettes gave way to CD duplicating and mailing, and
finally to distribution via internet - to community radio satellites,
community radio program download sites, and direct to some subscribers
using email.

Thanks so much to hundreds of contributing producers around the world for
making our programming so diverse over the years, and thanks to many
stations in various countries that air WINGS.

Extra special thank yous to the sustaining community radio stations that
contribute annually so that WINGS can continue to pay honoraria to
contributing producers.  In the past year, these have been: KCSB-FM in
Santa Barbara, KGNU in Boulder, KMUD in Garberville, KRZA in Alamosa,
KKFI-FM in Kansas City; WORT-FM in Madison; WERU and WMPG in Maine - all of
them some of the greatest stations around. We're proud to be on your
lineup. And welcome to new sustaining subscriber KMUZ in Salem, Oregon,
which is starting to carry WINGS on June 1 :)

I recently retired from working as a campus-community radio station exec
here in Canada, but I'm in great health and spirits and plan to continue as
series producer for WINGS into the foreseeable future.  However, I am on
the lookout for future successors. As always,WINGS is recruiting new
producers and new stations.

I'm also looking forward to having visits from radio folks at my new home
on beautiful Denman Island BC Canada.  My partner Suzette and I are hosting
our first-ever Women's Media Camp starting July 29.  Info:
www.facebook.com/womensmediacamp

Come up and see us some time!

Yours in community media solidarity,
Frieda


-- 
Frieda Werden, Series Producer
WINGS: Women's International News Gathering Service
wings at wings.org
www.facebookcom/wingsradio
www.facebook.com/womensmediacamp